But then she sighed, a soft, small noise, and she was so sympathetic that he couldn’t throw her in the same box as her brother and father. She was different—lacking the killer instincts that had brought his father to his knees.
‘I imagine that must have been very difficult for you.’
‘Yes,’ he drawled, and at her look of pain he grimaced, making an effort to soften his expression. ‘The markets were weak and confidence was low. His investors deserted him—he was left with barely anything.’
‘But you rebuilt it,’ she said.
His nod was short.
‘That must have taken an incredible amount of work.’
He shrugged laconically. ‘It’s what I’m good at.’
Her smile was just a shiver across her lips. ‘I can see that.’
‘I needed him to know that Herrera Incorporated was valuable again. It’s more than a business, hermosa. This is a birthright. A legacy. No one wants to leave something worse than when they inherited. But my father...’ he said, breaking off, not quite sure why he felt so free to confide in Amelia when he generally made a point of holding his private matters close to his chest. But she waited patiently, her enormous eyes promising him discretion, encouraging him to finish his sentence. ‘He was a gentleman,’ he went on, smiling as he surrendered to the memory. ‘He believed in honour and decency. He came from a time when a man’s handshake truly was as good as his word—and a word between decent people meant more than a contract. It was naïve, in hindsight, but it’s how he’d always done business. It was easy for your brother to target him.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The despair almost killed him.’
She blanched visibly. ‘You couldn’t do anything to stop it?’
‘Not at the time. My father didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late. Their plan was ruthless, meticulous and executed with brilliance. Within the space of a fortnight, he’d lost almost everything.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently, her eyes showing the sincerity of her words. ‘I wish...that hadn’t happened.’
How long had he been waiting for a diSalvo to apologise? A long time. But not this diSalvo—and not now. It was too late for apologies, too late for forgiveness. The die had been cast long ago: his hatred and need for vengeance had been forged in fire. No words could weaken those feelings.
‘It is part of our history now,’ he said, sipping his drink, his eyes holding hers.
‘But not our future,’ she ventured, her look one of hope.
He stayed silent—how could their future be anything but?
‘When did he die?’ she asked, turning the conversation away from their blood feud when he didn’t respond. And he was relieved by that—another out-of-character feeling, for Antonio Herrera never shied away from a conflict.
‘Not long ago.’
A frown flickered across her face. ‘When?’
‘Four months,’ he said.
Her frown deepened. ‘That’s right before we met?’
‘A month before,’ he agreed.
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘Why would I?’ he prompted, as though it didn’t matter. As though his father’s death hadn’t invigorated his passionate need for revenge. As though it hadn’t scored through his flesh like acid with new resentments, fresh pains.
‘Because,’ she responded with exasperation, ‘we talked about stuff and because it feels like something your wife should know,’ she said simply. And then, less simply, infinitely more pleasurably, ‘Because I want to know stuff like that. Because maybe I could help you. Maybe talking is important.’
Her kindness was unexpected and touching—it was also unsettling. Because he suspected he didn’t deserve kindness—particularly not from Amelia.
‘Perhaps seeing you put all thoughts of my father from my mind,’ he said, aiming to lighten the mood.
Her cheeks glowed pink, but she dropped her gaze, suddenly pretending fascination with the meal in front of her.
‘I doubt that.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’ And she looked him square in the eyes, and something in the region of his chest tightened. ‘You came to me because of your father. Why else would you act then? Shortly after his death, you enact this revenge plan of yours?’
‘It wasn’t that,’ he said, although of course the timing had seemed fortuitous. ‘It took my detective some time to locate you.’
‘Detective?’ she repeated, scandalised. ‘You had a detective looking for me?’
His shrug was more relaxed than he felt. ‘You weren’t in Italy, as I’d presumed you would be. Nor were you in London. Who would have thought you’d take up a job as a teacher in a school in a town in the middle of nowhere, using an assumed name? It was as though you were trying to disappear from the face of the earth.’
Her lips twisted. ‘I suppose I kind of was.’ Her expression assumed a faraway look. ‘I love my family, Antonio.’ She sent him a look, and he heard the words she hadn’t said: Enough to marry you to save them. ‘But I never fitted into their way of life. I didn’t like the sense of being a commodity rather than a person. All my life, I’ve wanted to be normal. Just a regular person with a real job, who can do normal things. That’s why I was in tiny village in the middle of nowhere. It’s why I became a teacher.’
His chest compressed at the picture she painted, of a girl always out of place and time, and he couldn’t help the surge of guilt that rushed through him. Because he’d dragged her back into the spotlight, and deep down he knew she would have been happier if only he’d left her alone.
‘But a detective?’ she teased, turning their conversation back to his method of locating her.
He took her lead, but his mind was raking over her admission of having felt so out of place, and making a new kind of sense of that. Her refusal to take part in a wedding reception suddenly made sense, and he marvelled at his insensitivity. Her reaction had been unusually panicked. Now he understood that. Pity clouded his eyes but he kept his voice light.
‘Why does that surprise you?’
‘I suppose it shouldn’t. You wanted my shares in Prim’Aqua; you did what you needed in an attempt to procure them—including sleuthing me out with a private eye. You don’t let anything stand in the way of your dreams.’
But her words rankled and he needed to reject them instantly. ‘I didn’t come to your home to seduce you, Amelia,’ he said throatily. ‘What happened between us that night was as simple as me wanting you and you wanting me.’
‘It wasn’t simple,’ she said softly. ‘Not with all this between us.’
Never had truer words been spoken, yet still he sought to refute the statement. ‘I wasn’t thinking of our families when I took you to bed.’
And more heat suffused her cheeks and, Cristo, he wanted her in that moment. He wanted her, but not just because his body was tight with desire. He wanted her because he longed to kiss her, to make her cry out for him; he ached to seduce her slowly, to show her how it could be between two people completely in sync. Their single night together had been too short; had he known he would not have the pleasure of her company